Exploring the Guest Experience
of Short-term Rentals
Ethnographic research • Data synthesis • Journey mapping • Cross-functional collaboration
How do you uncover the hidden pain points in your guests' journey? Discover how project Marco Polo set out to map every step, revealing insights that paved the way for transformative solutions.
The Quick Take
Opening the lockbox of the Airbnb property booked.
TLDR: This case study explores the guest experience at Evolve, a short-term rental management company, highlighting research methods to identify pain points in the customer journey.
Through immersive "guest role-playing," internal employee surveys, and external customer interviews, key issues such as poor communication and disorganized emails were uncovered. These challenges, especially during post-booking phases, often led to missed critical details and high customer service requests.
The study concluded with actionable insights, leading to the design of a streamlined welcome text and website hub to enhance guest experience and reduce friction during trip planning.
My Approach
Stage 1: Playing the Guest Role
Diving into the project our first and most time intensive task was to book and visit Evolve properties with the twist of being a highly engaged customer.
Our friends on the Customer Insights team shared with us that 34% of people writing in do so during the planning stage. Common reasons are for things like…
“Do I need to bring my own coffee and filters?”
“Can I get an early check-in?”
To embody these customers we requested early check-ins, made reservation amendments, and documented every aspect of the experience, from pain points to highlights.
I was trying to request an early check in for the Airbnb rental but was struggling to find the contact number for the host.
This project pushed me to be diligent in file organization, which was sometimes tedious, but as someone who organizes their Tupperware, I was up for the challenge.
Checking In and Out
The second task focused on the in-stay experience, ie: we checked into the properties, assessed and worked in the home for the day. Not exactly recreating a common use case for trip scenarios but simulating as best we could within work hours.
After entering the home we evaluated the property based on what was posted in the listing.
At each location we took notes on ease of use for the following:
Finding the property
Getting into the house
Initial impressions, “Does this property meet my expectations?”
Connecting/sharing the wifi
Contacting the host for an issue
Although this trip was purely for research, I could empathize with the pressure of our 'Trip Planner' persona to deliver a great experience for my coworkers. Just before opening the front door, I had this moment of anticipation, thinking, “This better be a ten.”
Connecting to wifi (Vrbo).
Kyle, a true UX hero, holding a fallen tree blocking the path into our Airbnb home. After multiple attempts to contact the owner, she told us she already knew about the downed tree but failed to notify anyone.
Documenting our Journey
After completing all three trips, my subsequent duty involved compiling our screenshots, videos, and written notes into a comprehensive journey map that was both rich in data and user-friendly. I designed it in such a way that one could quickly scan through it if they were not interested in delving into the details, while also providing the option for a more in-depth analysis for those interested in the methodology.
Here’s a holistic view of each distro journey. Take a look at the board in Miro for a deeper dive.
This sample screenshot documents trying to check in early to the Evolve property (booked on Evolve.com).
Calendar of Vrbo booking associated emails.
Results: Emails = Messy UX
As my PM and I looked back on our three trips, we identified a myriad of opportunities for enhancements, anything from addressing strange odors in home to speeding up refunded pet fees. The challenge we faced was to narrow our focus. Our conclusion: how we communicate with guests during their trip planning phase.
Oftentimes critical information like check-in criteria or payment information was getting lost inside our inboxes. In addition, the emails themselves were difficult to read. The language was verbose, type styles didn’t pass accessibility standards, and the email wasn’t optimized for smaller screen sizes.
Given the trouble with our emails it made perfect sense to me that our call volume to customer service was so high during this phase. Having identified this area of opportunity, we proceeded to the next phase of our research to incorporate a broader range of feedback beyond our own.
Stage 2: Analyzing Internal Employee Survey
My second initiative was to synthesize responses from an internal survey conducted by our Customer Experience team. The survey, which consisted of 19 questions, was completed by over 150 internal Evolvers after having rented a vacation property and was website agnostic. This data gave us a wider breadth of feedback on what makes a vacation seamless. Since the majority of the responses were in the form of written answers, I chose to focus solely on the most pertinent questions for our project.
Here’s the final mapping in Miro.
How satisfied were you with your vacation on a scale from 1 - 5? Why did you give it that rating?
What kind of questions or issues did you encounter during your stay that resulted in contacting the guest contact, property owner, Evolve or other distribution site?
Finally, is there anything you would like to share that took your experience to the next level?
Stage 3: Interviewing External Customers
6 Unmoderated Interviews
The last stage of our research project was to collect information from people outside of Evolve. I ran six unmoderated interviews using Userzoom with people who have had experience renting vacation properties. Through our line of questioning my PM and I aimed to answer the same question we have been exploring throughout this research project: What makes a vacation rental seamless?
Highlights from Responses
The themes that emerged were not surprising. We found a similar sentiment to what people in our internal survey reported. Here are a few of the questions asked that helped inform our overall perspective of the guest experience.
How would you describe your style of trip planning?
Most people are medium to heavy planners (5 of 6)
What types of experiences with or features of a vacation rental are most likely to leave a positive lasting impression on you?
Easy access, good communication, clean and well stocked (3 of 6)
What types of experiences or issues with a vacation rental are likely to leave a negative lasting impression on you?
Poor communication (5 of 6)
Guest 1 on what types of issues are likely to leave a negative impression on you?
“Not being able to communicate an issue or help with the host.”
Guest 2 on trip planning
“I like to plan some activities ahead of time but be flexible and open to anything that might come up while on the trip.”
Conclusion: Poor Guest Communication
While reviewing each result set with my PM, the phase that stood out for us was post-booking when guests were organizing their travel plans. Our emails weren’t helpful.
The transactional emails sent were obviously getting lost in the shuffle. Be it the chaos of inboxes or lack of brand awareness, our customer service team was constantly getting requests to answer questions whose answers were inside of these emails, things like “what’s the property address” or “how do I check-in”. Since most of our customers come through Airbnb or Vrbo, it makes sense that an email coming from Evolve would get overlooked, not to mention there were often multiple emails coming from both Evolve and the booking site.
Looking at the contents of our emails subject lines were vague and often confusing and while the body was overly wordy and and lacked hierarchy making it difficult to skim.
Next Steps
Instead of revamping our email design, my project manager and I resolved to tackle these concerns by creating a fresh experience. We opted to send a welcome text message to guests, which directed them to a new section on our website offering all the necessary information for planning their vacation. I’ll share more on my solution design in the next project.
If I could go back in time* I would have cut the scope down to the first stage of research. Even though it was a luxury to have time for all the research, the copious amount of data we gathered proved to be a time-consuming endeavor to organize and a challenge to present. Additionally, several of our findings were quite similar, which caused me to wonder if some of the data we collected was overkill.
*If I could back in time I surely wouldn’t go back to work on work.